On August 6, 2026, the private prison company CoreCivic told investors it had just had one of the best quarters in its history. Revenue up more than 27% from a year earlier, to $684.9 million. On top of that, $1.6 billion in net proceeds from selling four of its facilities to the Department of Homeland Security — which then paid the company to keep running them.

The reason is not complicated. The United States is now holding almost 66,000 people in immigration detention. Somebody has to be paid to hold them.

CoreCivic is a Tennessee company, based in Brentwood. And over the eight months before that earnings call, three checks moved from the top of that company to a Tennessee freshman in Congress.

The checks

Matt Van Epps won a special election on December 2, 2025 and was sworn in two days later. Here is what the Federal Election Commission's records show about who was funding him on the way in and immediately after:

• Damon Hininger — $13,500. CoreCivic's chief executive from 2009 until he stepped down in 2025 gave to Van Epps four separate times: July 23, September 17 and November 6 of 2025, and again on January 26, 2026.
• Patrick Swindle — $3,500. Swindle took over as CoreCivic's president and CEO on January 1, 2026. He wrote his check on January 19 — his third week in the job.
• CoreCivic's PAC — $5,000, on March 9, 2026.

That's $22,000 from the company's political action committee and both of its chief executives. Whoboughtmyrep's FEC-derived donor database lists another $13,500 from Carrie Hininger, plus more from other CoreCivic employees.

For a first-term member of the House, that's a lot of attention from one company.

What the company needed

CoreCivic's business is detention beds, and the customer is the federal government.

Hininger had already told investors on earnings calls that Trump's immigration crackdown was good for the company's bottom line. Patrick Swindle did the math for them on this month's call: the four facilities sold to DHS worked out to an average of $307,000 per bed. We laid out the whole industry picture earlier today: two companies, $1.4 billion in a single quarter, a former GEO Group executive now running ICE, and a president whose brokers have traded private prison stock 29 times since he took office.

None of that money arrives on its own. It requires Congress to keep writing appropriations for detention.

Which brings us to what Van Epps has been doing with his first eight months.

The freshman on the Homeland Security Committee

Van Epps sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security — the committee with jurisdiction over ICE.

When funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed in February 2026 and the shutdown dragged past 70 days, Van Epps didn't just vote to restore the money. He ran a campaign about it. His own office's April 29 press release announcing his vote lists more than twenty separate appearances, videos and statements he made on the subject — Newsmax, OANN, a whiteboard video, floor remarks, committee remarks, local radio.

His words in that release:

"Democrats have demonized the brave men and women of ICE and CBP who are on the front line of this fight to protect the American people. This disrespect has been nothing short of despicable."

And:

"It is high time we empower these agencies to accomplish their crucial mission, and I urge my colleagues to join me in passing this budget resolution."

"Empower these agencies" is a phrase that means one thing on television and a different thing on an earnings call. Every dollar Congress appropriates for detention is a dollar that flows to whoever owns the beds — and in Tennessee, that is overwhelmingly CoreCivic.

We should be clear about what we can and cannot prove. There's no evidence anyone told Van Epps what to say. There doesn't have to be. The company that profits from detention funded the campaign of a member who was placed on the committee that oversees detention, and that member became one of the most vocal people in Congress on the subject within four months of arriving. That is how the arrangement works, and it works without anyone ever having to say the quiet part.

The prison that's about to become his problem

Here's the part that makes this local.

CoreCivic runs four prisons under contract with the state of Tennessee, plus a fifth in West Tennessee now contracted to ICE. One of those state-contracted prisons, in Trousdale County, has been under federal civil rights investigation since 2024. The Justice Department opened it after audits flagged dangerous understaffing and safety problems, to examine whether people held there were being protected from physical violence and sexual abuse. The investigation is still open.

Under Tennessee's new congressional map, Trousdale County is in the 7th District — the district Van Epps is running in this November.

So the freshman funded by CoreCivic's outgoing CEO, its incoming CEO, and its PAC is about to represent the county where CoreCivic's most troubled Tennessee prison sits, while serving on the committee that decides how much federal money flows to the company's detention business.

Tim Leeper, whose son died of an overdose in a CoreCivic-run prison in Tennessee, has spent years asking state lawmakers for accountability legislation and watching company lobbyists kill it. He told the Tennessee Lookout what he thinks the pattern is:

"If he becomes our next senator by appointment, it will just be a continuation of the favor network. He and CoreCivic donate a lot to politicians."

Leeper was talking about Hininger, who is now openly interested in a U.S. Senate seat. But the description fits the whole arrangement.

Why we should care

Detention is not free, and it is not neutral. Every bed is a public bill, and right now that bill is being paid to a company whose executives fund the people who vote on it.

We already documented that Van Epps arrived in Congress on more than $2.4 million in outside spending — more than his own campaign raised. This is the same story at a smaller scale and closer to home: a Tennessee company with a direct financial stake in federal policy, a Tennessee congressman with a vote on that policy, and money moving from one to the other before he had cast a single vote.

The question we should be asking our representative isn't whether ICE officers deserve to be paid. It's why the company that gets rich from the detention buildup found him quite so early.

We deserve better.

Sources

• Vanessa Romo, "Private prisons announce $1.4 billion in revenue as immigration detentions climb," NPR, August 8, 2026.
• Adam Friedman, "Former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger floats replacing Blackburn in U.S. Senate," Tennessee Lookout, June 23, 2026.
• Contribution dates and amounts are from Federal Election Commission itemized receipts for the 2026 cycle. Photo: official congressional portrait.